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We Need More Leaders. So, What is a Leader?

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In a research study that he carried out for his book The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker, Brad Lomenick found that less than one-fourth of Christians feel that “their workplace has a clear vision that is easily understood by employees.” This leads to cynicism, confusion, wasted effort, loss of enthusiasm, and a whole host of negative things.

What’s the solution? We need more leaders, for casting vision is the task of the leader.

It might sound a bit odd for me to say we need more leaders. For sometimes it seems as though everybody thinks they are a leader. And it has almost become cliche to hear people say “we don’t need any more books on leadership. We already have far too many.” Don’t we have plenty of leaders, and far too many resources on leadership?

No.

We have far too few leaders, and far too few good resources on leadership.

The reason people have not noticed the acute need for more (and better) leaders is because we have failed to understand what leadership actually is. 

So the first step in undoing the dearth of leadership in the church and in the world is to get back on track in understanding what leadership is in the first place.

One of the most helpful ways to understand what leadership is comes from understanding what it is not, but is often confused with: management. Brad Lomenick captures the essence of the difference very well in The Catalyst Leader:

Managers work on things that are right in front of them. They manage the e-mail inbox, respond to staff crises, sign checks, pay bills, and then drive home to relax at night before they have to do it all over again. Manage, rinse, repeat.

But leaders are fixated on the next day, the next goal, the next project. While managers are tending the grass, leaders are peering over the hill. Sure, they respond to what is in front of them in the here and now, but they are also brainstorming about tomorrow. They exert energy to invent the future. Unlike a manager, a leader lives in the tension of the now and the next.

If you want to lead, you need to be focused more than just on doing what’s in front of you. You have to set your focus on what’s next — not predicting what’s next, but creating what’s next. Leaders are almost obsessively focused on the future — on creating change by inspiring and motivating (not controlling) people to make that change happen together.

So leadership is not first about good process and creating efficiencies. It is about casting vision, setting direction, creating clarity, and giving people hope that things can be better. Leadership, more than management, taps into the side of human beings that is of the spirit. The realm of inspiration and passion. In fact, leaders are often willing to tolerate chaos and messiness in process when it is necessary to fully understand a problem and arrive at the true, long-term solution.

As long as we equate “smooth running processes” (as important as they are) with leadership, we will continue to have a massive leadership shortage in the church and society.

Real change is often messy, and you cannot manage your way to it. It takes leadership, which is a distinct skill in its own right. (This is one reason the path of redemptive history sometimes seems so all-over-the place: God is not just a manager, but also a leader, and guiding his people to the restoration of all things is a leadership task, not just a management task.)

If you want to learn more about the difference between leadership and management, here are three helpful things worth reading:

  • What Does a Leader Do?, a post where I try to summarize the essence of leadership.
  • The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham’s book that nails the distinction between leadership and management — and shows you how to be effective in each.
  • Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?, Harvard Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik’s article that caused an uproar in business schools by arguing that “the theoreticians of scientific management, with their organizational diagrams and time-and-motion studies, were missing half the picture — the half filled with inspiration, vision, and the full spectrum of human drives and desires. The study of leadership hasn’t been the same since.”

Be Better Than Average

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This is something we continually need to be reminded about. I am amazed by the militant commitment to mediocrity of so many people — including in the church. Brad Lomenick gives us a great exhortation to continually seek to be better than average.

"What Do You Mean by Fault?" On Helping the Poor Who Seem to be Making Bad Decisions

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Sometimes people argue that we should not help those in need when the need is a result of “their own fault.”

This is a deadly view. For example, imagine if Christ had said that about us? “I will not go help them and deliver them from their sins — they brought their misery upon themselves by their own disobedience. I will give to the good angels instead.” To refuse to help someone on the grounds that they “did this to themselves” is a denial of the gospel itself.

This view, however, is not just deadly; often, it has just plain misunderstood the situation.

Sometimes a person’s situation is indeed a result of their own sin or poor choices. But very often when we think the person has brought their difficult situation upon themselves, our assessment is actually incorrect. What looks like “their own fault” is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

The great 18th century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards brings this out very well in his sermon “The Christian Duty of Charity to the Poor.” In answering a set of “objections to giving to the poor,” one of the objections Edwards takes up is the objection that “he has brought himself to want by his own fault.” Edwards’ response is incredibly insightful:

In reply, it must be considered what you mean by his fault. If you mean want [lack] of a natural faculty to manage affairs to his advantage, that is to be considered as his calamity. Such a faculty is a gift that God bestows on some, and not on others; and it is not owing to themselves.

You ought to be thankful that God has given you such a gift, which he has denied to the person in question. And it will be a very suitable way for you to show your thankfulness, to help those to whom that gift is denied, and let them share the benefit of it with you.

This is as reasonable as that he to whom Providence has imparted sight, should be willing to help him to whom sight is denied, and that he should have the benefit of the sight of others, who has none of his own….

Edwards’ point here is deepened by modern research, which now has found that “being broke saps mental bandwidth.” A recent study has found that “just being broke, in and of itself, damages abilities to make good decisions in a way roughly equivalent to losing 13 IQ points — or constantly losing a night of sleep.”

In other words, in many cases “rather than the poor being poor because they make bad decisions, they make bad decisions because they are poor.”

This shows us just how important it is that we take Edwards’ counsel here. If some of those who are poor seem to be making bad decisions and we refuse to help lest we fear that we will be “aiding and abetting” their “bad decisions,” we will actually be making the problem worse. Hence, the solution is to get off the high-horse of our superiority complex and actually help tangibly, financially, and concretely. Counterintuitively, giving financial help in spite of the appearance of some bad decisions is often the way to help restore good decision-making.

This study also helps guard us from one mistake we could make in applying Edwards’ point. Though it would be totally contrary to what Edward’s is saying, one mis-application we could make is to begin setting ourselves up as judges of people who are in need who continually begin to stereotype the poor by too quickly saying to themselves “this person must intrinsically lack the ability to manage their finances well.” As Edwards’ points out, of course, there are some people that simply have less ability in this area. However, as this study helps us see, there are some people who are suffering not a permanent lack of ability in that area, but a temporary lack, simply because that can be the very effect that poverty has on a person.

What is the solution? The solution is not to set yourself up as the person’s superior, because you are “wise” and they are “unwise” and clearly in need of your superior understanding and guidance. The solution is not to begin giving the person advice. The solution is to stop being afraid of actually giving money to the poor, and to stop tying so many conditions to it. The solution is to have an approach to helping the poor that is based on respect for the individual, dignity, and empowerment. It means we need to see those who are in poverty as capable individuals. This means being willing to give money, among many other things, to help those who are poor get out of the condition of their poverty and, among those who may be experiencing this phenomenon, thereby enabling their decision-making faculties to heal back to normal.

In other words, sometimes the solution to poverty is not to seek to educate the person so that they can then get themselves out of poverty, but rather help them get out of poverty first, in which case we will find that the problem the whole time was not lack of decision-making skills at all, but simply the nature of poverty itself.

In Honor of those Who Work Hard in the Lord

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Sometimes in evangelicalism today, it can be looked down on when somebody works a lot, or works hard, or takes risks for the cause of the gospel. The first thought is not always “way to go,” but rather “you must be doing something wrong.”

The Bible does not share that perspective. Paul tells us that “his grace toward me was not in vain….I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:11) and “we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:9). Perhaps most of all, he holds up to us Epaphroditus:

Receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me (Philippians 2:29-30).

So if you find yourself working a lot, and working really hard, by all means do seek to work less and find the right balance in your life. I’ve even written a book to, in part, try to help you do that.

But, in the meantime, way to go — and, thanks.